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To be fair SpaceX is pretty impressive. Wether that's Musks doing can be argued somewhat but it's still fair to say he's been deeply involved

by dtx1 2y ago

scotty79 2y ago
Only when you compare it to nothing people already achieved half a century ago. SpaceX now I basically using taxpayer money to launch empty tubes one after another on suborbital trajectories in hopes that one day they could be used for private Starlink satellites and pretty much nothing else. Starship is Cybertruck. Watch what some competent people that are critical of Elon have to say and the completely different image emerges than what he tries to project with less and less success. More rooted in facts.
- dtx1 2y ago
  Show me a single rocket carrying any payload into orbit and land again afterwards that isn't made by SpaceX. I'll wait.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    Not only that, SpaceX has launched more mass to orbit than everyone else combined over the entire history of space launches. They are responsible for more than 80% of the world's mass to orbit last year. Starship is a full 2x - 3x the power of Saturn V, the previous largest rocket ever to reach orbit. Raptor operates with the highest chamber pressure of any rocket engine that's ever flown. SpaceX operates the largest constellation of satellites in the world - more than all others combined. The list of records goes on. It's really nuts. Wild that people think a cult of personality or even billions of dollars can accomplish all that. Not without serious engineering chops to back it up.
    - core_dumped 2y ago
      No one is under the illusion it’s his cult of personality unless they are themselves in the cult. Also, serious engineering chops WITHOUT the billions of dollars doesn’t get you very far anyway. It’s not like there is an abundance of organizations with the resources to compete with spaceX. If the US budget was properly balanced for that as opposed to more war maybe we would’ve gotten self landing rockets and more by now…
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        Lack of funding is not among the top reasons the US space program never produced a reusable rocket. The US space program, like most nation state space programs, is organized as much to keep weapons developers employed as to build rockets. It was the reason we cooperated with Russia on the ISS. As such, the projects get split and sub-contracted to many different suppliers in ways which prevent the sort of top-down integrated whole-systems engineering required for reusability. Changes to make one part more reusable necessitate changes in other parts of the vehicle, and the moment those cross systems boundaries that span different organizations, you're screwed.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      Starship never went to orbit and made all flights so far with zero payload so any launch capacity it might have is purely theoretical and aspirational. The most mass SpaceX launched are their own Starlink satellites which may very well prove to be uneconomical soon. They'll be falling down at the rate they are brought up. And all of that supported by tremendous amount of money (billions) from US taxpayer given for unrealistic promises of building something that might get to the Moon on schedule.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        Citations, please. NASA's largest payments to SpaceX that I'm aware of have been part of the commercial crewed flight program, which was openly bid, and which SpaceX has provided the only fully working system so far. Starliner, the only major competitor, is a half-decade behind schedule and stuck at the space station at the moment. Starlink seems to be raking in the cash, and has provided great low-risk demonstration of the world's first flight-proven rockets. Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
        scotty79 2y ago
        "In April, NASA selected Musk's aerospace company SpaceX for a $2.89 billion contract to work toward landing "commercial" humans on the moon. Musk beat out Jeff Bezos's aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin for the contract, which gives NASA use of Musk's Starship spacecraft to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon. Musk's company has been developing the spacecraft with the intent of taking the first humans to Mars. " https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12#spacex-lands-a-289-billion-contract-with-nasa-in-april-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su... > Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it. That's still suborbital flight, basically ballistic because they didn't re-ignite engines in space, even if it had orbital velocity (of some orbit) at some point. Also flight no. 3 was helplessly tumbling so even if they could reignite engines it would just move randomly. So far it was basically flung piece of ballistic garbage. Only the last flight achieved some control and only half-burnt on re-entry. The only thing that worked was landing burn (which they had a lot of practice with Falcons) and their engines very gradually improving reliability, which I assume could be done without fireworks if they didn't intend to re-ignite them in vacuum and zero gravity yet. Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight, without any modern engineering or computing. Falcons are solid although market for their services is mostly Starlink, because the rest of humanity simply doesn't need to hurl as much stuff into orbit yet. Starship is Cybertruck. Baby of Musk's "genius" where "vision" (to mislead investors) overrides actual engineering.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    It was researched, but deemed uneconomical. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/mpam1a/why_nobody_before_spacex_landed_rocket_boosters/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/mpam1a/why_no... It still may very well be. As far as we know SpaceX is burning money not earning it. Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 are very nice rockets. If you go by data provided by SpaceX cheaper than competition.

To be fair SpaceX is pretty impressive. Wether that's Musks doing can be argued somewhat but it's still fair to say he's been deeply involved

by dtx1 2y ago

To be fair SpaceX is pretty impressive. Wether that's Musks doing can be argued somewhat but it's still fair to say he's been deeply involved

scotty79 2y ago

Only when you compare it to nothing people already achieved half a century ago. SpaceX now I basically using taxpayer money to launch empty tubes one after another on suborbital trajectories in hopes that one day they could be used for private Starlink satellites and pretty much nothing else. Starship is Cybertruck. Watch what some competent people that are critical of Elon have to say and the completely different image emerges than what he tries to project with less and less success. More rooted in facts.

dtx1 2y ago
Show me a single rocket carrying any payload into orbit and land again afterwards that isn't made by SpaceX. I'll wait.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Not only that, SpaceX has launched more mass to orbit than everyone else combined over the entire history of space launches. They are responsible for more than 80% of the world's mass to orbit last year. Starship is a full 2x - 3x the power of Saturn V, the previous largest rocket ever to reach orbit. Raptor operates with the highest chamber pressure of any rocket engine that's ever flown. SpaceX operates the largest constellation of satellites in the world - more than all others combined. The list of records goes on. It's really nuts. Wild that people think a cult of personality or even billions of dollars can accomplish all that. Not without serious engineering chops to back it up.
  - core_dumped 2y ago
    No one is under the illusion it’s his cult of personality unless they are themselves in the cult. Also, serious engineering chops WITHOUT the billions of dollars doesn’t get you very far anyway. It’s not like there is an abundance of organizations with the resources to compete with spaceX. If the US budget was properly balanced for that as opposed to more war maybe we would’ve gotten self landing rockets and more by now…
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      Lack of funding is not among the top reasons the US space program never produced a reusable rocket. The US space program, like most nation state space programs, is organized as much to keep weapons developers employed as to build rockets. It was the reason we cooperated with Russia on the ISS. As such, the projects get split and sub-contracted to many different suppliers in ways which prevent the sort of top-down integrated whole-systems engineering required for reusability. Changes to make one part more reusable necessitate changes in other parts of the vehicle, and the moment those cross systems boundaries that span different organizations, you're screwed.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    Starship never went to orbit and made all flights so far with zero payload so any launch capacity it might have is purely theoretical and aspirational. The most mass SpaceX launched are their own Starlink satellites which may very well prove to be uneconomical soon. They'll be falling down at the rate they are brought up. And all of that supported by tremendous amount of money (billions) from US taxpayer given for unrealistic promises of building something that might get to the Moon on schedule.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      Citations, please. NASA's largest payments to SpaceX that I'm aware of have been part of the commercial crewed flight program, which was openly bid, and which SpaceX has provided the only fully working system so far. Starliner, the only major competitor, is a half-decade behind schedule and stuck at the space station at the moment. Starlink seems to be raking in the cash, and has provided great low-risk demonstration of the world's first flight-proven rockets. Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        "In April, NASA selected Musk's aerospace company SpaceX for a $2.89 billion contract to work toward landing "commercial" humans on the moon. Musk beat out Jeff Bezos's aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin for the contract, which gives NASA use of Musk's Starship spacecraft to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon. Musk's company has been developing the spacecraft with the intent of taking the first humans to Mars. " https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12#spacex-lands-a-289-billion-contract-with-nasa-in-april-2021-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su... > Starship has made it to orbit twice now. With apogees intended to bring it down safely in case of failure, as is prudent with a new platform. But orbital velocity is orbital velocity, and Starship has achieved it. That's still suborbital flight, basically ballistic because they didn't re-ignite engines in space, even if it had orbital velocity (of some orbit) at some point. Also flight no. 3 was helplessly tumbling so even if they could reignite engines it would just move randomly. So far it was basically flung piece of ballistic garbage. Only the last flight achieved some control and only half-burnt on re-entry. The only thing that worked was landing burn (which they had a lot of practice with Falcons) and their engines very gradually improving reliability, which I assume could be done without fireworks if they didn't intend to re-ignite them in vacuum and zero gravity yet. Project Apollo was way further by their fourth flight, without any modern engineering or computing. Falcons are solid although market for their services is mostly Starlink, because the rest of humanity simply doesn't need to hurl as much stuff into orbit yet. Starship is Cybertruck. Baby of Musk's "genius" where "vision" (to mislead investors) overrides actual engineering.
- scotty79 2y ago
  It was researched, but deemed uneconomical. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/mpam1a/why_nobody_before_spacex_landed_rocket_boosters/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/mpam1a/why_no... It still may very well be. As far as we know SpaceX is burning money not earning it. Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 are very nice rockets. If you go by data provided by SpaceX cheaper than competition.